If it's possible, in X3, I'd like to see a function whereby I can export not only a single project, but a whole collection of projects into a single package file. This way, I can archive the package as a single file and it contains, literally every clip, setting, automation, plug-in (FX or PC) settings and literally EVERYTHING Sonar would need to bring back a whole album's worth of sessions/projects from that one single file.
 
Obviously, this would mean that projects would have to be linked somehow to be identified as part of a collection in order to be packaged up as a single archive file.
 
Where different installations of Sonar look for and store audio files is too loosely managed. As a result, it requires a lot of manual work to collectively get everyone to store all these in the same places, since the seasoned pros never save these projects and audio on the Operating Systems' harddrive or Sonar's default directories. 
 
I would sincerely love a tool that can archive a whole album's worth of Projects to a single file for later retrieval. When accessing that file it can simply ask me, "Where do you want this archive/package exploded?" and it does so wherever your heart desires, keeping all audio and other data within the hunting radius of Sonar X. From there, you can simply open projects for that album as needed.
 
Does this make sense? To equate, if you use Parallels or VMWare for the Mac, to save an entire Windows or Linux instance, it's all contained in a single file. All you ever need to do is backup that one file. That makes it really easy to store a library of different Virtual machines in a single folder on a single external harddrive, for example.
 
For Sonar, this means, I could store entire sessions of projects in a single file for a single band. One entire album. One file. Archive it! Easy.

Yeah, that'd be nice. At first I was thinking something like Audio Creator might do what you want but it seems you want all the tracks. I'm currently trying to figure out how save an album's worth of projects to all have the same settings as a base starting point and then tweak them individually as needed. The easiest way I can come up with is just keeping them all in one huge project and do the tweaks VIA automation/envelopes. I'm getting very confused as to how to manage all this as using templates seems to lose settings and if I make one major tweak (like adding an effect to one track) making it apply to all of the projects individually will be an enormous hassle. Some kind of advanced syncing option between projects would probably be the best way to describe what I want but highly customizable. Meh.

Versioning is something I believe PT may do. I don't see versioning as a dire need but if there's a group of engineers working on a single album, or say, an album's worth of video game music, for example, this could be very useful. I just don't want to get an ulcer every time I open an old project and it's missing some audio, for example. Or, if I decide to use a different program for the day, I can at least have all this packaged in a way the other DAW can understand it without much fuss since the archive would be the same every time.

You can do that now by creating a folder to store per-project folders and zip it up. It will be dependent on the target having the software properly configured and installed but otherwise the zipped projects would be complete. The procedure will breakdown when plug-in formats change, plug-ins are missing libraries or the target configuration is just too different . The safest thing would be to print all the tracks before archiving.

Isn't that kind of what Bundles are for (aside from compatibility with other DAWs)? Then of course you could do a Save As with Copy audio selected and save it in a specific folder. Unfortunately that doesn't solve the problem of doing multiple projects at once as you've described.
 
As far as versioning I'm not sure that would get me where I wanted. I've got an idea brewing that incorporates your idea and what I'd like to see. I might post it in a bit.

Beat me to it, scook... but I figure br must be aware of that process. Anyway... still scheming. I've got a doozy of an idea for an album management tool.

Bundling was the only method of extracting a copy of a project out pool of project files and audio a long time ago. The bundling feature has been included ever since for backward compatibility. Since the introduction of per-project folders the need for bundling new projects is no more. There is no need to have a single area to house all the project files and have them point to a common audio directory. Each per-project directory can host any number of snapshots of a project and the associated audio. A snapshot of a project is extracted from the per-project folder with the "Save as" function.

Okay... picture this. I'll use my current project as an example.
 
I've got 18 songs each with 8 tracks. There are multiple takes of each so let's just say I've got 8 songs. These saongs are going to be my album. They are all in one long project. So I want to edit that so each song has their own project.
 
Now I've got 8 projects with 8 tracks each. All the settings are the same. I've done all my editing and I'm ready to do some overdubs, cloning and mixing.
 
Now I want to add these to a pool for my album. I'm gonna call my feature the Album Management Tool (will be referred to as AMT).
 
I open the AMT and add all 8 projects to this pool. I open one project and do some cloning of say the guitars. I do the clones, set the pan, gain, etc levels of the clones. I know that I'll want those same tracks in the other songs to be cloned and set the same way for consistency throughout the album. I open the AMT, set that track I just worked on as the source or whatever we want to call it then select the other tracks I want these changes applied to. 
 
Now I can just set the AMT to copy all changes from the source track to the rest of the projects in one shot OR I can set parameters that will copy over some changes but not all. Each project could be set individually.
 
Now each project has the same amount of tracks and the levels are consistent throughout.
 
Now I want to overdub. It's likely I'll want to put a lead guitar track or say MIDI tracks for doubling up snare/kick hits. I make my changes to one project and again use the ATM to apply these changes to all. Obviously I'd have to go into each project individually to extract the kick/snare hits to MIDI and do the leads/overdubs but all the set up work is done including synths.
 
Once everything is tracked and edited I want to mix. I get all my plugins inserted and mix the first song (or any song) to where I like it. Now I go back to the AMT and set it to copy all the plugins, fader levels, PC settings, pretty much everything over to the rest of the projects. This is where it gets fancy though. If I don't want a specific plug on a specific track I can click on any project and access a dropdown that displays all the potential plugins that can be copied from the source over to the other projects. Then to take it even further if I click on the individual plugin I get a list of parameters that I can either include at the set level or leave off (which would leave that parameter at default after it copies over).
 
The automation conundrum... Perhaps there are automation envelopes in the source track. This would obviously cause confusion and wouldn't work on an entirely different song. So there could be  a further setting that allows you to pick at what point in the timeline of the source project you want to extract that parameter from.
 
It's a little bit crazy and perhaps would be very difficult to code but that kind of syncing power would be awesome. I even had an idea that after the sync has been done there could be an option to have Sonar do a quick examination of the project levels and warn you if any plugs, PC modules, tracks, busses, etc are clipping.
 
Okay... there's my attempt at being smart. Someone somewhere has probably done this before but I would love to see something like this in Sonar.
 
 
 

Oh and then you could use save that Album Management Tool session as a single file (audio and all) that can be moved around and opened at any time. That's what made me start thinking about this in the first place.